


How I Would Like to Believe in Tenderness

by Hawksquill



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Blood, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Complete, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mentioned James Potter, Mentioned Lily Evans Potter, Miscarriage, Motherhood, One Shot, Pregnancy, Sibling Rivalry, Sister-Sister Relationship, Sympathetic Petunia Dursley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:01:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24516577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hawksquill/pseuds/Hawksquill
Summary: The Boy Who Lived appears on the steps of number 4 Privet Drive when Petunia Dursley is still recovering from her most recent miscarriage.  She cares for the boy while grieving her baby, her sister, and what might have been.  Ultimately, she must decide whether to keep him, even if it means giving up everything she ever wanted.
Relationships: Petunia Evans Dursley & Harry Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley & Lily Evans Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley/Vernon Dursley
Comments: 8
Kudos: 42





	How I Would Like to Believe in Tenderness

Petunia Dursley woke up in a pool of blood. Dudley was crying in the next room. Her back ached. She cradled her belly as she maneuvered to a sitting position. Her fingers felt a warm wetness. _No. Not again._ She sat in the dark as the blood slowly pooled between her legs. Dudley’s whimpers turned into screams, staticky through the baby monitor. 

“Pettie, the baby,” Vernon grumbled. He rolled over and folded the pillow over his head.

“It’s…it’s happened again,” she whispered. Petunia’s husband was turned away from her and did not hear her.

“Vernon, love.” A gentle prod at his side, her fingers sticky with blood.

“Damn it, Petunia, I have work tomorrow!”

“I’m bleeding.”

“Oh, bugger. Come now, dear, don’t cry. Let’s get you up.”

* * *

“He’ll just scream his head off the whole time and no one in that damned hospital will have any peace!”

“Well, Yvonne is with her parents for the week and Mr. and Mrs. Bradley nearly had a conniption the last time we called after dinner. Would you rather stay with him while I drive myself to hospital? Or we can go knocking on doors?” Petunia was stuffing nappies, a change of clothes, and a few of Duddy’s favorite soft toys into a nappy bag while Vernon rocked their screaming son.

“Of course not! Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll start the car.”

Dudley would not suffer to be put into his car seat by anyone but his mummy, so Petunia held him down and wrestled the straps over his writhing limbs while the blood dripped down her legs.

“Diddykins, please behave,” she whispered, backing away when he began kicking her stomach. It probably did not matter anymore, she supposed. But there might be a chance.

* * *

It was too late. There was nothing to be done. Vernon paced the hallways holding Dudley, who screamed and screamed. Petunia could hear him from her hospital bed. The nurses kept plying her with tepid tea and asking her how she was feeling, but she felt nothing at all. She was empty.

Dudley was eventually whisked away somewhere so the doctor could talk to Vernon and Petunia alone. She gave them a stack of pamphlets and the information for a support group that met on Wednesday nights.

“Thank you,” Petunia said, putting the pamphlets on the bedside table without looking at them. 

“Your son is a sweetheart. He can’t be much older than one or so?”

“Fifteen months,” Petunia said. 

“And it looks like this was your second pregnancy since he was born,” the doctor looked away to flip through Petunia’s chart, but there was a question in her voice.

“Petunia had a hard time…well, you know, the first time, with Dudley,” Vernon said gruffly from his chair in the corner. The doctor turned back to face Petunia. 

“The doctors said if we wanted another, we should start trying soon.” The teacup rattled as Petunia lifted it to her mouth. The tea tasted bitter.

“Well, you need time to heal. Your body is worn out. I’d advise you to take a break from trying, at least for a while.”

“But we want a second child! She’s not exactly getting younger, is she? And our family doctor, he went to Cambridge, you know, _he_ said…” Vernon thundered.

“Excuse me, but I’m actually talking to your wife,” the doctor said, still turned away from him. Petunia’s eyes darted between her husband and the doctor. She drained the entire cup of awful tea, but the doctor waited for her to finish. Petunia cleared her throat.

“Well, I suppose if you say so…”

* * *

Everything ached for days afterwards. Petunia loathed the adult nappies she had to wear. What she hated most of all was that she still had spares from last time. Vernon joked that they should invest in red sheets. He stayed home with her the day after they got back from hospital, then went back to work. They fell back into their usual routine, except that after dinner Vernon would make Petunia a cup of tea, run her a bath, and rub her back until she fell asleep. Dudley learned a new word, but he mostly just cried.

Petunia thought she was dreaming when she opened the door to find a sleeping baby next to her milk jugs. She was still bleeding and cramping, and she always slept poorly when Vernon was away on business trips. Dudley had kicked her in the face moments ago when she tried to feed him some carrot puree. She blinked several times. Was this some kind of vision of her lost child? A sign from God? The Dursleys were not particularly religious, but a visit from a baby angel seemed more likely than a flesh and blood human baby being abandoned in Little Whinging.

The baby opened its eyes, began fussing, and promptly spit up. Baby angels did not spit up.

Petunia bent down to pick up the bundle. The baby had dark hair and was a lot smaller than her Dudley. She carried it to the end of the drive and looked right, then looked left. Privet Drive was eerily deserted, without a single person in sight. For a moment she forgot why even Vernon’s car was gone, until she remembered that he was on a business trip in Manchester. A nagging little voice inside her head told her to take the poor thing out of the cold and call 999. And yet Petunia felt an overwhelming desire to leave the baby on the pavement for someone else to find, to go inside, to shut the door, and to care for her one living child as if nothing had happened.

The baby was crying in earnest now. It reached a tiny hand towards Petunia’s hair and caught a strand in its balled-up fist, knocking loose a heavy yellow envelope that had been tucked in its blanket. That was strange. Petunia stooped to pick it up. Stranger still, it was addressed to her.

She carried the baby inside and mechanically shut the door behind her, bringing the bundle into the kitchen. Dudley was screaming. In his mother’s absence he had managed to decorate his face, clothes, and the walls and floor of the kitchen in carrot. Petunia set the other baby on the kitchen table and examined the envelope. It was written in an old-fashioned hand and sealed with a purple seal. Petunia broke it without thinking and, ignoring the escalating screams of Dudley and the other child, began to read.

* * *

Lily was dead. The words grew blurry through the tears Petunia had been refusing to cry for nearly a week. She read the same sentence five times in a row before casting the letter aside. Her only sister, dead. Foolish, stubborn, beautiful, brilliant Lily. Her baby sister. No, it simply couldn’t be. She was so young. Petunia remembered sending Lily a birthday card for her twenty-first birthday and receiving a stilted note in reply. Dead at only twenty-one. It couldn’t be.

Dudley was not accustomed to being ignored by his mother, and screamed himself hoarse until Petunia feared he might damage his own vocal cords. She wiped his face and hands with a damp cloth, put a dummy in his mouth, and set him down in his playpen. The other baby had quieted, and Petunia left it (him, she supposed, she knew it was a boy now; he was Lily’s son) wrapped in his blanket on the kitchen table. 

Petunia put her head in her hands and sobbed until her chest ached. She had always assumed that she and Lily would reconcile somehow, someday. Lily would gradually mellow and Vernon would soften over time, as so many people did. One day they would be friends, sisters in more than name once again. When the inevitable reconciliation came, there would be apologies and hugs on both sides. One day they would be able to laugh about all the petty misunderstandings and cruel jabs that had kept them apart for a few years when they were young.

But now…no. That was never to be. Lily was dead. Petunia’s breath caught in her throat as she realized that her entire family was dead now. Daddy gone, Mummy gone, Lily gone. She was only twenty-five, and she had no family left.

A cramp seized her. It felt like someone was twisting her womb from the inside out. Petunia’s manicured nails dug into her scalp as she yanked at her carrot-streaked hair. How could she be so stupid? What was she doing mourning bloody _Lily_ , who she had been feuding with for years, when her own baby was dead?

And she _did_ have family. She had Vernon and Dudley. They were all she needed. 

* * *

“What in the devil’s name is it doing here?” Vernon blustered. The baby was still wrapped in its blanket on the kitchen table. Vernon had not believed Petunia when she rang him in Manchester that morning. He had a slate of important meetings all day so couldn’t possibly come home early. He had clearly thought she was having some kind of mental break, but now he was seeing it with his own eyes. If Petunia had not been so exhausted and numb, she might have felt smug.

“Some of _their kind_ left him. They said he doesn’t have anywhere else to go,” Petunia patted the pocket of her apron where she had tucked the letter. It had been addressed to her alone, so she knew it was meant for her eyes only. And she wanted to keep it that way. 

“Don’t their lot have orphanages? I’ll be happy to introduce them to the concept. Let’s ring social services, they’ll come and get it.”

“It’s late, Vernon. They won’t have anyone in the office until morning.” Petunia chopped potatoes and put them in the roast pan. She was already behind on dinner as things were. She didn’t need a long conversation with a social worker who would ask probing questions on top of it all, thank you very much. 

“Besides, they’d have a lot of questions about where he came from. They would probably think we stole him from someone, for goodness sake!”

“So what, you’d have us keep it? You know how I feel about… _them._ With parents like that, it will be like _…that_ too, won’t it? We always said we’d never have that nonsense in our house!”

“No, I don’t _want_ to keep him…” Petunia turned to scrape the potato skins into the rubbish bin. There were parts of the letter Petunia had not understood. Something about the m word. Something about a mother’s love. Something about family. Something about keeping it…him…the child…Lily’s child safe. He would be in danger if he were anywhere else, the man had said. If Vernon knew that keeping him had anything to do with hocus pocus spells, he would never let him stay.

“What else are you suggesting, Pettie?” The nickname grated, and Petunia flinched. Lily had always called her Tuney, even in the last letter she had ever sent to her. Vernon did not seem to notice and continued speaking.

“What’s his name, her awful husband, can’t we send it to his family?”

“They’re dead, too.” Like Mummy and Daddy. Like Lily. Petunia set the table and poured Vernon a glass of wine. 

“And anyway, I said I don’t _want_ to keep him. But, Vernon, he’s family. He’s the only family I have left in the world,” Petunia’s voice trembled. 

They ate dinner in silence, apart from Dudley’s wails. 

“You do realize what this means, don’t you? We can’t afford another mouth to feed unless we stop trying for another baby.”

“Surely we could make things stretch? If you get that promotion, and we dressed him in Diddy’s old things?”

“We always agreed we wanted two children. That there is a second child,” he pointed to the other baby. Petunia had moved him to the playpen while the family ate dinner. They didn’t have a second highchair.

“Well, I suppose we could see how the finances worked out after a few months,” she ventured.

“We bought a house of this size because we wanted two children. We bought the car because it has room for two children. The maths of you quitting your job worked out for two children, but not three.”

Petunia poured herself a glass of wine. 

* * *

The Dursleys did not call social services the next morning. In the first few weeks, Petunia often wished that they had. She felt nothing but irrepressible anger when she looked at Lily’s child. Everything had always come so easily to Lily. She was effortlessly beautiful. She had special powers. Everyone loved her. She had found a man who worshipped the ground she walked on when they were still at school. She had conceived without even trying, Lily had told her as much when Petunia called to announce her own pregnancy. Lily had laughed and chattered about how they would be pregnant at the same time. Petunia had waited until well into the second trimester before telling anyone for fear of losing the baby again. But Lily was barely eight weeks and she just blurted it so casually, like it was nothing.

Lily had everything, and Petunia was always left in her wake. And now Lily was dead, and Petunia was left behind once again, saddled with caring for her sister’s child. Lily always managed to avoid all the hard things in life.

It was difficult to separate the baby in front of her from her anger at Lily and grief over all she had lost. Petunia only touched him when she had to. She fed him. At first it felt wasteful to buy formula for him when she was still nursing Dudley, but she couldn’t bear for him to take yet another thing from her Diddy. It was _her_ milk, for Dudley and her other babies. Not for Lily’s child. 

She dressed him. Dudley’s old clothes were much too big for him. He looked a bit like Dudley, especially in the striped blue outfit that had been Petunia’s favorite a few months ago. They had the same ears, and their eyes crinkled in the exact same way when they cried. She wondered what her lost babies would have looked like in these clothes.

She changed his nappies. When she wiped him clean, she always grimaced and thought that Lily should be the one doing this. But here she was, cleaning up Lily’s messes like always.

She bathed him. Dudley hated baths, but the other baby seemed to enjoy the feeling of the water on his skin. Sometimes Petunia thought about leaving him in the bath and turning her back for a minute or two. Her duty to Lily would be discharged. She could tell that awful man from the letter that she had done her best, but there had been a horrible accident. Everything could go back to normal. Sometimes the other baby met her gaze as she washed him, as if he knew what she was thinking.

It got easier with time. The new neighbor Mrs. Figg seemed to take a particular shine to the other boy for some reason. Once or twice a week the Dursleys took her up on her standing offer to babysit him, and they got to pretend they were a normal family for a while. 

Her hatred eventually tempered to dislike, and then to apathy. She still mourned for her babies, but she no longer mourned for Lily and what might have been. She stopped thinking of the other baby as Lily’s child. She avoided looking at him. She avoided saying his name. But when Diddy started babbling, she found that she could hear her son say his cousin’s name without flinching.

Sometimes when he was sleeping, she buried her face in his hair and pretended he was her own. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "The Moon and the Yew Tree" by Sylvia Plath.
> 
> This wasn't necessarily intended to be a redemption story for Petunia, but an examination and contemplation of what she might have been going through when her nephew turned up at her door. I'd always wondered about her complex relationship with Lily, why she chose to keep Harry, and her moment of hesitation the last time she sees him. It always seemed like there were a lot of complex elements in these relationships: duty, jealousy, love, hate, anger, resentment, grief. All these things that Petunia transferred from her relationship with Lily to her mothering (or lack thereof) of Harry. I think in my version of the story, she did the best she could, even if it wasn't nearly enough. 
> 
> I'm sorry it's sort of grim but I hope it was an interesting character study!


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